Peleg S. Perley to Abraham Lincoln, 9 August 18581
Henry, Marshall County, Illinois,August 9th, 1858.Hon A. LincolnSpringfield, Ills.,Dear Sir,
Yours to F. S. Potter P. S. Perley & others of Henry, saying you would address us on the 23d instant at Henry if we wished was duly received. We do wish you to and have given notice to that effect and mean to have a rousing gathering
to meet you.2
Yours Truly,P. S. Perley.<Page 2>
[Envelope]
LACON Ill.
AUG[AUGUST] 10 1858Hon A. Lincoln,Springfield,Illinois.
AUG[AUGUST] 10 1858Hon A. Lincoln,Springfield,Illinois.
2Initially, Perley and Potter sent a petition to Abraham Lincoln on July 12, 1858, with the signatures of thirty Democrats and fifty Republicans, inviting him to visit Henry, Illinois. Lincoln agreed on August 3. The invitation stemmed from Lincoln’s recent nomination at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention to run against incumbent Stephen A. Douglas to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. At this time the Illinois General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate, thus the outcome of races
for the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate were of importance to Lincoln’s campaign. Lincoln and Douglas both focused their
campaign efforts on the former Whig stronghold of central Illinois, where the state legislative races were the closest.
Lincoln boarded a train at 3 a.m. on August 23 and arrived in Henry, Illinois, to
address the town for several hours on his promised date. Perley introduced Lincoln to a crowd that was several thousand strong.
Marshall County was a northern Illinois county assumed to be strongly Republican in 1858, and that
proved to be the case in the election of that year. Marshall was in the Eighth Illinois Senate District, where Republican George C. Bestor defeated Democrat William S. Moss, and the Forty-Second Illinois House District,
which elected Republican John A. McCall over Democrat Washington E. Cook.
Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of
1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-99, 400-401; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-58, 476-77; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 4 November 1858, 3:2; Chicago Daily Press and Tribune, 5 November 1858, 1:3; The Weekly Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 10 November 1858, 2:1; 24 November 1858, 2:3; John Clayton, comp.,
The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219-22; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 23 August 1858, https://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-23.
Autograph Letter Signed, 2 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).